About Me

Monday, March 31, 2014

We're reading the cutest story in Speech today. April Fool! Watch Out at School is a Scholastic book by Diane de Grout. It's a fun story about playing April Fools' pranks in school and how the best prank may be no prank at all. Gilbert's teacher has fun with the class when she asks her students to use funny sounds for punctuation in reading. I've modified this a bit and have a freebie page for you to use with your students. The targets are: following directions, speech/reading fluency, articulation at reading level, and/or skills of auditory processing.

You may also like my April Fools' Absurdities. I was so excited to see it featured on the teacherspayteachers blog last week! You're students will enjoy this activity for the April Fools' Day or any time of the year and the pictures and absurdity cards are sure to bring about lots of laugher.

PS- My own children are waking up to find black rice in their beds (white rice colored with marker). They'll learn the hard way that food in bed attracts mice and it will also get them up on time for school. I'm a little worried about what they'll plan as revenge.

Friday, March 28, 2014

It can be challenging to incorporate hands-on fun with my middle level students, but when I came up with this idea I knew it would be a hit.

My students LOVE candy and with Easter coming up there are an abundance of jelly bean flavors and options out there. Fun and unique flavors like: buttery popcorn, dill pickle, toasted marshmallow, and spicy cinnamon open up a variety of subjective and objective descriptor words. And the more traditional flavors of strawberry, grape, peach, and of course black licorice (love it or hate it) can be found at any drug or grocery store.

Because of the wide array of flavors, I thought it would be fun to work on using descriptive words to describe the jelly beans. My students have been using the words "good" and "bad" way too much lately and this activity has stirred up their creative expression.

Download the freebie to see how your students can also become connoisseurs of jelly beans.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

It's been almost a year since I started blogging (stay tuned for my big bloggy birthday bash). I've learned a lot within this year and am revising many of my spring products by adding more pages, data tracking forms, and multi-leveled teaching opportunities.

This product was made because so many of my students have difficulty with following directions and understanding concepts. I've incorporated directions with manipulatives, paper and pencil directions, and "point-to" directions in order to target a multitude of goals and language levels.

Check out Blooming Directions at a special price and receive your FREEBIE by downloading the preview Here

I've added 4 learning level tasks and data collection forms for tracking student progress. WWDB is also on sale until all of my spring updates are completed.

If you already have these products, please upload the revised versions.

Here's the BIG NEWS!

My Super Spring Bundle is in the process of being revised. So far, I've added 6 pages to the bundle and I have the remaining 5 products to update. The 93 page bundle currently sells for the reduced price of $9.50. When the updates are completed, the bundle will go up in price so this is the time to grab it. Your job will be to keep checking in for the updates which will be completed by April 15th (a big deadline day). TPT will notify you of updates. This deal will save you at least $6.00 from purchasing the products individually.

Monday, March 17, 2014

I just checked my comments and feel so honored and blessed to have such great fans and followers. I almost have 1,000 feedback comments and I read every single one of them! This month we are highlighting two feedback comments as the 3 million TPT Sale was a great success and we want to give you thanks.

Thanks so much Elizabeth B. this probably my most specialized product and it makes me happy to know that you'll use it for years to come. Jenny L. I'm so happy that you found my little monsters. Which one doesn't' belong? is one of my first products and I just added new pages and data sheets to it. In fact, I was using it less than an hour ago with

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Speech Time Fun has a great linky party on using dry erase. I'm behind the eight ball and didn't get this post completed by the link up date, but I really want to share with you what I do in my little speech room.

Many of my students don't understand the concept of time and have problems with attention to task and sequencing. The dry erase board has come in handy to schedule and sequence our therapy sessions. With a dry erase schedule of what we're doing with our speech time, students are more focused on the lessons and know what is coming next. They love checking off the completed tasks and usually have a "cash in" waiting at the end. As you can see, I'm no artist! However, the students never seem to notice or care.

Life Skills

Here's how it works: The first thing I do upon the student/students entering the room is to write up the schedule of my session. While I am drawing (or writing) out the schedule , I verbally review it. For example, "First we will be working on calendar activities, second we are playing the basket game, third we will work on putting the pictures in order, and last you may add some beads to your necklace." The Time Timer is a great visual and I show that visual on the white board. The student checks off the activity when it is completed.

Notice how I don't use pictures for this groups schedule. They are readers but still benefit from the schedule. I also love having the lesson plan right in front of me as it helps me to track more goals and stay focused as well.

Many of my middle school groups work on syntax and we use the dry erase boards for my monthly sentence scramble activities. Each student in the group receives a scrambled sentence page and a white board. Students work independently on their sentence pages and I check-in with each student to provide cues and mark progress. The student erases the board when he/she is done and passes their card to the next person.

Can you tell that I like my duct tape designs. My dry erase boards were looking kind of dingy so I spruced them up with some colored tape. I found this Scotch Expressions tape turquoise leaf design at Staples. I use it everywhere to spruce up my office.

I hope you enjoy these ideas and find them useful in your work. Head on over to Speech Time Fun for some more ideas on dry erase.